Back in the '90s, the goal of frozen yogurt companies was to make their products taste as close to ice cream as possible.

Not anymore.

Today, the hottest frozen yogurts are tart and tangy and proud of it.

The newest no-fat and low-fat fro-yos popping up in shops across the city are being marketed as healthy snacks for their reduced calories and their beneficial, gut-friendly probiotic bacteria. And they're being served in hip settings that, like coffeehouses, are designed as places to linger.

Red Mango at Quarry Village, OrangeCup at The Shops at La Cantera and North Star Mall, and Summer Berry Frozen Yogurt in north central San Antonio are a few of the local options.

Though the new fro-yos come in a variety of flavors, all local shops offer a tart, or original, flavor. From there, variety abounds: Raspberry, lychee, pistachio, chocolate, Madagascar vanilla, pomegranate and cheesecake are just a few. Though the yogurts can be eaten plain, most customers top them with fresh fruit, nuts, cereal, even honey.

In 2007, Red Mango opened the first frozen yogurt shop in the States to meet the standards for active and live cultures, says Branden Dross, director of operations at Red Mango at Quarry Village, which opened in July 2009. The company plans to open a couple more locations in the next year, the first at U.S. 281 North and Stone Oak Parkway, the second, “hopefully in the downtown area,” Dross says.

Though Pinkberry was the first chain to become well known for its tart frozen yogurt (thanks to its Hollywood celebrity customers), Pinkberry's early product didn't have enough live active cultures to be considered yogurt, Dross says. It since has been certified by the National Yogurt Association and carries the Live and Active cultures seal.

“You have to have live, active cultures,” he says. “Ours is all natural and has a probiotic, GanedenBC30, that helps the digestive tract.”

Preceding Red Mango locally was OrangeCup at The Shops at La Cantera, which opened Oct. 24, 2008. There, frozen yogurt cups are tagged with a partial nutritional analysis of the content. (A small zum yogurt with mango and pineapple toppings that I bought had 174 calories, 35 grams of sugar, no fat, 282 percent of the daily requirement of vitamin C, 19 percent of calcium, 10 percent of protein and 8 percent of vitamin A.)

As refreshing as tangy frozen yogurt is, it doesn't come cheap. At many local self-serve yogurt shops, yogurt sells for about 39 to 45 cents per ounce. At Red Mango, a small (5-ounce) cup of original fro-yo is $2.50; the three other flavors are $3.50. Red Mango's first topping is $1; additional toppings are 25 cents.

At TCBY, 5920 Broadway, manager Diana Perez says they offer traditional frozen yogurt rather than the tangy variety and that's just fine with their customers.

“We get a lot of people who prefer our yogurt. We have the best golden vanilla (flavor) that's 96 percent fat-free but tastes just like creamy vanilla ice cream” she says, noting that their customers prefer yogurt over ice cream because it's lower in calories (1/2 cup or 3 ounces of golden vanilla has 120 calories) and has probiotics.

Perez says they have regular customers who come in daily or every other day and then go somewhere else to see what the tart yogurts taste like.

“They come back and say they prefer ours,” she says. “They're not too keen on the tart. People like sweet.”

kharam@express-news.net

New Fro-yo not really all that new

So just how new is the “new” tangy frozen yogurt that’s spreading to shops across the city?

Not all that new, says Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst and vice president of the New York-based NPD Group, who’s spent 30 years tracking consumer behavior.

“This is not the first time we’ve gone down the path of frozen yogurt,” he says. “1991 was the peak year for frozen yogurt when you’d find it on every street corner. It’s been on a slow decline since then.”

As Balzer explains it, eating frozen yogurt is simply another way of having a frozen dairy product.

In the nearly two decades since its peak, new versions have popped up, including the latest, the tangy variety. “They keep finding new ways of delivering the product to us,” he says. “First of all, it capitalizes on our love of ice cream. This is a new version of ice cream; it just happens to be frozen yogurt.”

Balzer’s true admiration rests with traditional yogurt — not the frozen variety, but the kind sold in refrigerated supermarket cases — which he calls “clearly the food of the decade. Nothing has grown faster in our diets.”

The reason for its growth is simple, he explains.

“Yogurt has a health halo. It’s perceived to be healthy, so anything associated with yogurt is (considered to be) a good thing,” he says. Balzer says you can look at yogurt and “see what America wants from its food supply just by its consumption of that one thing.”

Not only is yogurt ready to pop open and eat — “No pots needed,” Balzer says — you can eat it at breakfast, lunch, dinner and as a snack. It can be a main dish or a side dish and is eaten by men, women and children.

“And, the clean-up instructions?” Balzer asks, then answers his own question.